


Dappled Things

by Thimblerig



Series: in the still of the night [2]
Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Episode: s01e03 Hard Times, Gen, Missing Scene, The Blitz, could be read as Aziraphale/Crowley if you wanted, foot washing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-30
Updated: 2019-08-30
Packaged: 2020-09-30 12:31:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20447207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thimblerig/pseuds/Thimblerig
Summary: “You were walking in the church,” the angel murmurs, easing out of the passenger seat with the bookbag clutched in his arms. “My dear, your poor feet. Come in and I’ll wash them.”“Yeah, nah,” you say, shutting the car door behind him. “I’ve got things to see, people to do. Busy, busy, busy.”He looks at you again, silent, implacable. “You will come in,” he says, “and I will wash your feet.”And when have you been able to refuse Aziraphale anything?





	Dappled Things

_ 1941, London _

“This car smells of cabbage,” Aziraphale says curiously.

“Mmph,” you say, steering breakneck through the dark streets of London. Relics of a delivery dotted along your home street, that was. Nothing fancy. Keeping the neighbours happy is good tradecraft for a man of sinister motives - so you shift a few things from the victory gardens to where they’ll fill a few bellies, is all. No skin off your nose and it keeps them complacent. Very simple. Only there’s nothing quite as _ real _ as a good cabbage, and it stays real for a long time after it’s gone, sort of thing.

The angel falls silent again, uncharacteristically so, as you spin around corners with your lights off, picking your way through the streets by the dappling light of the barrage balloons and the anti-aircraft lights. One lone bomber glides overhead, engines sputtering. You can _ feel _ the pilot, barely 17, feel his lust for home, his fear, the anger he’s been entertaining like a magnificent, foreign guest. From the narrow streets below you _ tempt _ him: fan his instinct for home and safety. Carefully, delicately, you encourage his fear, his distaste for this noisy machine he’s tied to (not too much, careful, push him too hard and he’ll lash out), and with a sigh that is like the breaking of something he puts his weight on the steering yoke and turns for home, his bomber still encumbered with poisonous weight.

You did it while driving - it was easy for a master tempter like you - barely distracted from the road. It’s not like you haven’t had practice lately, doing two things at once, three things, four things... The Germans think you’re a war profiteer. SOE thinks you’re MI5. The neighbours think you’re always good for tea and pastry, and Hell thinks you’ve been Very, Very Naughty. You keep them all spinning, plates on slender rods, dancing among the flying sabres. You twist and dance and if the audience can see your flying sweat - you haven’t missed a step yet. Remember to take a bow when it’s over.

The angel looks the same, pretty much, though it’s been decades. Changed his hat but kept his coat - always does like to cling to his favourites, that one. But he’s quiet.

Why should he be surprised at you? Don’t you _ always _ come for him? A few decades hiatus is _ nothing _and what’s a petty spat between associates, anyway?

Though it wasn’t a petty spat. _ Fraternising, _bah. And what did he seriously think you were going to do with the holy water - when have you _ ever _ entertained thoughts of checking out, eh? Eh?!

The Bentley finds its way easily through Soho. It’s a good car, it really is, running sweetly, and the angel’s bookshop is so easy to _ feel _ right now. You park in front where the building hunkers down at the point of a crossroads, between stacks of sandbags miraculously set just far enough apart for you to insert yourself.

“You were walking in the church,” the angel murmurs, easing out of the passenger seat with the bookbag clutched in his arms. “My dear, your poor feet. Come in and I’ll wash them.”

“Yeah, nah,” you say, shutting the car door behind him. “I’ve got things to see, people to do. Busy, busy, busy.”

He looks at you again, silent, implacable. “You will come in,” he says, “and I will wash your feet.”

And when have you been able to refuse Aziraphale anything?

The angel doffs his hat and coat as he steps through the door and the swathing veils of blackout curtains into a main room which holds a crossroad inside itself also, with a compass-rose in the centre where the muffled skylight blocks you from the sky. There’s light inside - a few careful lanterns and candles dotted along the branches inside the shop. A rustle, a hidden flapping of cloth and bedding. There are families sleeping here - women, a few men, swarms of children brought back from evacuation Against Advice. (They’ll be safe here, you know. The angel has swathed and garlanded this place in _ protection _ and _ safety, _ constructed _ touch-me-not _ and _ ward _ in the dome of the roof, spent so much of his virtue on _ sanctuary _ that you peek at him again through your dark glasses, checking he has not become transparent.

No. He stands, eyes distant, at the centrepoint of the cross, down to shirtsleeves and weskit, immutably, inexorably solid.

“Mr Fell!” a tiny soprano voice calls from the North arm and the angel’s expression shifts, dapples, transforms, caught between delight at the tiny humans in his home and horror at the prospect of having to actually talk to them for more than, perhaps, two minutes.

“Matilda,” he says gently, softly. 

“I can’t sleep, Mr Fell,” the tiny child says. Her woollen overcoat is still buttoned up, though it’s softly warm in here.

He smiles again. “Patience, Matilda. I’ll make you hot cocoa in a little bit.”

“Will you read me a story, after?”

“Maybe Mr Crowley could…” He looks at you hopefully and you shake your head slightly. Wouldn’t fit your image at all. 

The angel’s lips purse, then he softens again, looking at the small human. “In a little bit, Matilda. Soon.” And with a hand on your back, set hot and burning between where your wings would be, he ushers you to the hidden back office. 

The angel unbuttons his cuffs and matter-of-factly rolls his sleeves up over strong forearms, and steps around a corner. You hear a tap running, and he comes back with a chipped enamelled basin, rimmed in blue, with a soft cream towel laid over one shoulder.

Hand fluttering like a peaceful dove he gestures you to a stool and - you could leave. There’s company right outside the door and this is all hellishly awkward and - and your bones ache, and your feet burn. You sit.

The last time you were adjacent to foot-washing was nigh on a millenia or so ago. Your hair was longer then. You shift awkwardly on your high wooden seat and it is not until the angel kneels before you and curls his soft, strong hand around the back of your heel that you let the glamour you keep on your feet slide away. The boot vanishes, and he holds one pale foot, pasty-white and skinny, with long hooked toes. The tiny iridescent scales that remain of your reptilian heritage glimmer softly in streaks down your ankle, a delicate stain under the instep fading into puffy blisters on the ball of your foot, the heel. It’s not so bad, really. You might have to do a shed soon, blast and buggeration, but you’ll manage well enough.

There was an angel in Heaven. You dunno, was it Aziraphale? Your memory was shattered in the Fall as much as the rest of your substance, broken and remade. So maybe not, maybe you got that wrong. But it _ looked _ like Aziraphale - same shoulders, same fluffy white hair, same solid midsection and capable, craftsman’s hands. Everything like, except for the eyes. They were cerulean blue, you remember that, utterly peaceful - utterly without anger, or mercy. At the time it wore stark white and glorious gold like the rest of them, pure and holy, and there was a sword somewhere, and something shifted under your foot and -

That’s as far as it goes.

You shrug off the half-memory, pointless thing that it is. The low lamplight paints his shirtsleeves tawny, the silk back of his weskit a subtle kind of warm fawn, and shadows shift and flutter over his face. Doubts swim in his faded blue eyes, as always. “You don’t have to do this,” you tell him.

His hands still, one holding your foot, the other paused in flight with a handful of laving water. His head is bowed, all fluffy and white, so that you can see the back of his neck. “I think you’ll find that I do.”

_ “You owe me nothing,” _ you whisper harshly.

The angel looks up and - he smiles in a way that you don’t understand - confused, shy. He almost says something, then shakes his head ruefully and looks down again. The other foot now: the warmth of his cradling hand, the delicious cold of the water.

The small human, Matilda, is still awake. You can smell her fear from here, her wariness and her weariness. You tempt her along a bit, encourage her desire for warmth, her need to _ just let go, let someone else take care of things. _ Her craving to feel safe. She drops down like a snuffed candle, breathing easily and well. (Aziraphale is going to be attack-hugged for the next few days, every moment he’s in the shop, and it’s going to be _ hilarious.) _

“The doors will open to you,” the angel says, shaking drops of water off his hands into the basin and drying your feet. “Any hour of the day or night.” He looks up at you then cuts his eyes away. “Professional courtesy,” he mutters quickly, “while the bombs are falling.”

Well, of course they will, he’s already halfway through a guest-rite. He’ll be fetching bread and salt soon as blinking and - when he rises with the basin and the towel you slip off the stool, wince as your blisters hit the floorboards, and bring back your boots while trying not to grimace and hop.

“Ointment,” he says, blue eyes hurt. “And bandages.”

You grin rakishly. “People to do, angel,” you remind him. “Things to see.”

His mouth purses primly, but he doesn’t try to keep you again, walking you silently through the darkened bookshop (no candles now, the lights are going out).

“Aziraphale,” you tell the angel at the door, “you’re realer than cabbage.”

He smiles slightly, uncomprehending. That’s okay. You can understand for the pair of you.

You go out into the night.


End file.
